V.I.T.A.L. Emcee blew up The Sky Room Lounge Friday night with blazing fast raps and hot collaborations from his friends.
Noel Vinson, also known as V.I.T.A.L., was the huge headliner of the night, stunning everyone with his energy and his speed raps. The dark Sky Room in downtown Long Beach was the perfect place for him to celebrate his sophomore album release. Free shots of alcohol were served to guests whenever the microphone controller announced that it was time.
Vinson was preceded by two rappers. The first rapper, Imprint, performed a solid mix of hot rhymes.
Although Imprint looked tense for the first two songs, he settled into a rollicking hip-hop groove with songs such as “Magnified Development.” He rampaged through rhymes, spitting “I’m passing out free prescriptions/Every time they poppin’ a pill, they pick a mill and I’m a really kill ‘it/I’m injecting venom in their temple to leave ‘em crippled.”
By the time he reached the last song, “Check the Index,” he had the crowd of 30 to 40 people waving their hands in the air to his rhymes.
The second rapper, Swiss Precise, turned off the crowd slightly with his low-key rhymes to southern hip-hop beats. Although he had plenty of other exciting rappers to back him up, such as Hochii from Technicali, Swiss Precise was a cold fish. It’s a shame, because Hotchii looked really funny rapping with just his underpants on.
The whole night belonged to V.I.T.A.L. Emcee. The Buena Park rapper made a grand Halloween entrance through a cloud of fog to the Michael Jackson song “Thriller.” His costume, modeled after Pinhead from “Hellraiser,” was an edgy work of art. He wore a black suit, his body was painted white and nails were glued all around his head, making for a mind-blowing transformation.
After tossing candy to the crowd, he immediately jumped into the new album’s opening song, “God’s Hands.” Bouncing around the stage with Self-Lion, he effortlessly shouted, “The prophet’s in the house and it’s over/coloring you purple like Oprah with the crane and the cobra!”
He continued to take the house apart with “Off With Their Heads,” which blasted a cool, repeating “aah” sample to a staccato hip-hop beat. He stunned the entire audience with the song “Hip-hop Hijack,” featuring Chapter ONE. V.I.T.A.L. breezed through an insanely speedy rhyme, saying, “Don’t move, put your hands up like you’re praising the Lord, we got hip-hop for ransom/and if any one of you kumquats wanna catch a buckshot, we’ll be giving ‘em out like assassins.”
The most memorable song of the night was “Slouch Hat,” a sweet track with Spanish guitar riffs to a swing drum beat. The beat was cool and smooth as Matt Embree and Lauren Coleman sang a lovely duet before V.I.T.A.L. ripped on the microphone. It was a relaxing break after all the hard-hitting raps from Vinson, Imprint, Self-Lion and Maylay.
V.I.T.A.L. was on fire all through the night. After going through “The Writing on the Wall” with Maylay, he ended the set with a supersonic explosion of a rap in “Funhouse.” It was nearly impossible to keep up with him as he zoomed through nonstop phrases of lyrics in alliteration.
Half the fun of a V.I.T.A.L. concert is watching how many words he can say per second in his rhymes. This performance was no exception: It was an epic performance that amazed everyone who came to the Sky Room. Although people might not remember everything that Noel Vinson said in his raps, he truly is the Superman of the underground rap world, shouting lyrics faster than the speed of sound.
